As said, it's the job of a desktop environment (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, ...) usually to determine which program to use to open different types of files. When working on console, you just launch a program and if it lets you to, pass the filename to it as a parameter. Like to
view a plain text file
or to edit it, one of these
Code:
nano myfile.txt
vi myfile.txt
pico myfile.txt
joe myfile.txt
or to launch a website (might work for .html and such files too)
Code:
links www.google.com
(or try lynx if that isn't installed)
and so on. It depends on which files you want to open, and which programs you have installed. For mp3 files there are, depending on what you have installed, available
Code:
mpg123 somemusic.mp3
mpg321 somemusic.mp3
Usually if you're lost, try
Code:
apropos keyword
man -k keyword
where 'keyword' is some word, for example
and you should be presented (hopefully) with a list of some manpages (manual pages of certain programs or pieces of ssoftware) that may be related. An example:
Code:
man -k mp3
lame-libs (rpm) - LAME MP3 encoding library
so, mp3 "lookaround" produced a manpage of lame-libs. I could read that, but as it seems to only talk about libraries, let's try
instead, and if you have lame installed, you should get it's usage instructions (lame = Lame Ain't an Mp3 Encoder). You might not be after the instructions, but the above method might help you find
program names that can do something with certain files. It surely won't, however, take long before you are familiar with some of the most common tools of your system and can work with different types of files without wondernig which program to open them with.
